ECS 203 Curriculum & Pedagogy

Before the Akom reading, I had never given much thought to how valuable hip hop could be within the classroom. Akom insists that hip hop can be used as a tool to illuminate current issues of poverty, police brutality, patriarchy, misogyny, incarceration, racial discrimination, as well as love, hope, and joy. Not only does this approach to teaching social justice challenge the typical classroom practices, but it engages students by producing more justice-oriented citizens. The goal of integrating critical hip hop pedagogy is for students to develop meaningful strategies to fight for social justice and take on roles of advocating within their community. Not only does this encourage students to use critical thinking, reflection, analysis, and action with a social justice lens, it engages students with music, something kids care about . It is argued that Hip Hop is a valuable tool we can use to introduce youth to social justice issues as "Hip Hop is the dominant language of youth cult...

In my schooling, the main focus was creating a personally responsible citizen, to be a functioning part of society. I was taught to be personally responsible as my elementary schools motto was the "3R's: responsible, respectful and ready". Students were expected to be responsible, be respectful and be ready while being honest, obeying the rules and using our manners. I remember an emphasis on learning how to recycle, taking part in walks around the school yard picking up litter, as well as donating non-perishables to the local food drive. In high school there was a slight shift in citizenship as it became more of a focus of participatory citizenship. There was more of an emphasis on the students taking the leadership roles through organization of school fundraisers for things like sports teams, dances and graduation.  Having most of my school experiences focus on the personally responsible citizen I was never really taught to push for change, or made aware that change was...

After reading Levin's article I have a better understanding about the development of curriculum and how it is created through a process starting with a policy. The process involves bringing in groups of experts and representatives to revise or renew curriculum. This process could be negative as these experts are not considering the teachers in this process and how they may not have the resources or level of expertise to teach the curriculum in that way they are expecting. I now understand it is not as simple as you would like to think. The process involved in creating curriculum also has a lot to do with politics involving discussions of what subjects should be included or excluded, how much of these subjects and during what stage of a students' education should they be taught. There is also debate over the content of the subjects. Levin describes how difficult the curriculum making process is as "Any issue that is politically contentious can also turn into a curriculum di...

 [Deepening the Discussion]  Educators can go about addressing the ways in which the systems that we teach our curriculum in are intrinsically homophobic, transphobic, biphobic and oppressive towards queer and trans people in many ways. It is the responsibility for educators to develop further understandings and educate themselves on these topics to have a deeper and complete understanding of these terms and how to support all students who might identify as gender or sexually diverse. It is also important to be aware of their own ideas and how they transmit them within their classrooms. The deepening understanding text mentioned it is important for educators to "reflect on their own privileges and assumptions."(p18).  As educators it is our responsibility to become aware of personal assumptions and how they might influence the classroom or conversations. In doing this, future teachers will provide and make a habit of using inclusive and appropriate resources and language ...

 According to the commonsense understanding, a "good" student is one who is quiet, listens, follows instruction, completes their work and does well during assessments. These are all the things students are expected to learn that is "off the record" or not a part of the explicit curriculum. Kumashiro defines the "good" student as the kind of students who allow their teachers to have and maintain control of their classroom.  As a teacher, Kumashiro felt pressure from the school and society to produce this type of student. When he was not achieving this with his particular student, he felt as if he was not being an effective teacher. Painter described a "good" student one who's finished result was a "nobel man" prepared to become a member of society. Defining students as "good" based on their ability to conform to these not explicitly stated expectations is problematic. The students who are privileged by this definition are t...

For the critical summary assignment, I decided I was going to focus on Margaret Macintyre Latta. Margaret focuses on aesthetic education but to narrow it down, I decided to focus on her topics regarding play within the curriculum. I find this an interesting topic as I have never heard of play-based curriculum outside of the physical education curriculum.  In researching Margaret Latta, I came across one of her articles "Accessing the Curricular Play of Critical and Creative Thinking". This article focuses on the importance of aesthetic education, in particular, play. Within the article it is mentioned that it is the educators curricular task to draw students into the depth and complexity of learning across all subject areas, in doing this, critical and creative thinking is necessary. Latta, Hanson, Ragoonaden, Briggs and Middleton (2017) suggest that "too often , the critical-creative shaping of students inquiries is apt to be thwarted and even denied in classrooms"...

 The Tyler Rational theory of curriculum shaped my elementary years because most of my time spent in elementary school I was put into a split grade classroom. Looking back on my experiences, I can see that elementary school was focused on meeting the outcome and being graded on the surface level understandings rather than the actual process of learning and digging deep into the information. I remember my teachers always having strict plans because they had to teach multiple grade levels and meet different outcomes for each grade. I had the same teacher for both grade 5 and 6 because she was a split grade teacher and for both years. When I was in her classes I remember we focused on the exact same learning outcomes for both grade 5 and 6. This did not allow us to go in depth with the information that was being taught each year nor did it give us room to further explore or dive deeper into the topics discussed. Once we met the surface level understanding of the outcome through the fi...